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‘Stop Energy Poverty.’ Great Slogan, So How?

By Andrew C. Revkin January 4, 2011 11:33 amJanuary 4, 2011 11:33 am

With Republicans controlling the House, with stasists on energy and climate policy looking forward to a couple of years in which they are likely to get their way, I thought it worthwhile starting the year by exploring a couple of questions.

The first question went to George Will, in hopes of inspiring him to elaborate on his call for renewed American support for path-breaking science. In essence, I asked if he was willing to put some more thought into proposing how to reconcile Tea Party priorities with a focus on sustained inquiry that may not pay off for many years.

Here is a photo I took of the group’s booth there, at which Christopher Monckton, the hereditary third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, handed out green ribbons emblazoned with this slogan.

(For the record, Brad Johnson, the Center for American Progress climate blogger seen in the picture, did not accept one.)

During the talks, the group took reporters and other observers and participants on a short drive from the fancy conference centers and beachfront resorts to a village where there was scant electricity and few fuel choices for cooking. I wasn’t aware of the field trip at the time and didn’t go, but the group has posted a video of the visit (accompanied by the kind of soulful musical soundtrack used elsewhere to attract disaster donations).

But, looking at their Web site and statements, it was hard to find any sign of substantive proposals for getting affordable energy sources to the 1.5 billion or so people with no access to electricity or the 3 billion or so cooking with fuels and stoves producing noxious clouds of smoke.

To clarify things, I spent 15 minutes on the phone on Monday with the group’s executive director, Craig Rucker. You can find that chat summarized at the bottom of this post.

Here’s my overarching question for CFACT and anyone pressing the case for action to end energy poverty, whether or not they do so as part of a position on global warming:

Thinking globally, what’s your proposal for social, financial or technological innovations that can create energy choices that work for the long haul in places with no reasonable energy options now?

You’re against adding a price to pollution. Fine. That’s a stance related to the debate over climate policy. I want to hear what your proposals are for policies aimed at the goal on those green ribbons — stopping energy poverty now.

I don’t see a nuclear power plant getting built in Guinea any time soon, yet students there still have to hike to an airport parking lot to do their homework under the only electric lights for miles around.

As The Times reported just before the holidays, businesses are springing up around the handful of solar panels purchased by residents in such areas, which allow rural residents to avoid costly trips to town to charge cell phones at usurious rates, and allow kids to improve grades by studying at night.

Rather than handing out solar ovens (which many communities don’t embrace in any case), could your plan include helping powerless residents in poor places become solar entrepreneurs (while they wait for a power plant to get built somewhere, someday)?

It’s fine to promote the development of power plants in South Africa and India, but how do you propose getting more rural Africans the illumination and telecommunications they need so their kids can have a better shot at education and becoming part of the global brain network that fosters innovations?

It seems that most of the electricity from large power plants is aimed at increasing manufacturing. An end result could be trickle-down jobs (although if India is an example, an end result could simply be deeper divisions between haves and have-nothings).

In the meantime, what can you do for the moms cooking on dung and kids spending hours gathering firewood and reading by (expensive) kerosene-lamp light now?

I’m sure you’re fans of Julian Simon, the man who challenged population doomsayers by saying human minds were the “ultimate resource.”

What’s your policy for maximizing this resource by making sure that as many young minds as possible are hooked into the global intellectual grid that now allows anyone with an Internet connection to get a free college education?

As I indiciated, I spoke about energy poverty and policy with Craig Rucker, the executive director of CFACT, on Monday afternoon.

I asked what the group had done for the village near Cancún (the video mentions the group had been working there for several years).

He said they are “hoping to get them electricity from the grid in a few months” and in the past had distributed solar ovens and the like, as a “short-term solution.” The group has also helped solicit the donation of computers from schools in he United States and is involved with efforts to improve health and build barns in Uganda. They’re studying ways to generate usable gas from pig farms in Thailand. There’s more about the group’s “Adopt a Village” program on its Web site.

Their main point, he said, is still that any restrictions or fees on greenhouse gases or fossil fuels will end up making energy more expensive and less accessible in poor places.

The distribution of solar ovens and the like, he said, is meant as an interim step on the path toward getting these communities on the grid. He added that any prohibition on fossil fuels was sustaining energy poverty.

“Ultimately the things that will generate electricity in the developing world and here will be the same,” Rucker said, highlighting the next generation of nuclear power plants and hydroelectric dams as particularly applicable in parts of Africa.

I’d particularly love to hear from CFACT’s college groups. Keeping in mind the E’s in Generation E include “enterprise” and “energy,” I could easily see them shifting from protesting carbon constraints to diving in and expanding energy opportunities.

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.